by Playfuls Staff |
27th June 2006
Ground control responsible for the safety of the ISS space program is concerned with a new threat, which is extremely close to endangering the launch of Discovery space ship, on July 1.[more]
It’s not exactly a UFO in the usual meaning of the word. It’s a unidentified flying object and it- of course- floats near the International Space Station at only 2.8 km away. This news comes from the Russian Flight Control center in Moscow, after citing a NASA source.
The situation is quite serious, but does not yet require a dodge manoeuvre, said Russian flight trajectory expert Alexander Kireyev. “The object has no number in the list of space debris,” Kireyev said, according to reports from the Russian Itar-Tass agency.
“It is however probably an old piece of space exploration equipment.”
Should the old debris come any closer to the ISS, the two “inhabitants” Jeff Williams and Pavel Vinogradov would be forced to immediately move to the rescue space shuttle Soyuz. This is because a possible collision with the object could fatally break fuel or oxygen reservoirs, or permanently damage the solar panels.
Given the velocity registered outside the last layer of atmosphere, on orbital trajectories, the object might have the effect of an asteroid.
